Borderlands’ failure can easily be summed up by two things: its box office performance and its critical reactions. After coming out on August 9th, both of these metrics are looking less than stellar. So far, Borderlands has made approximately $1.3 million at the box office in its opening days. This is a dismal failure considering the movie’s significant $110-120 million budget. While there is definitely still time for Borderlands to make more money, this is not a very auspicious start. Furthermore, Borderlands’ box office may not improve by very much considering that reviews for Borderlands have been shockingly bad.
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An aspect of Borderlands that could have had an effect on its success was its complicated development. The movie was released in 2024, but it was originally announced almost a decade ago, in 2015. In that time, Borderlands went through various different hands, especially in terms of screenwriters. All in all, Borderlands had about seven different screenwriters over the course of its development. Ultimately, that lack of stability could have been the reason why Borderlands felt so lifeless once it hit the big screen. After going through so many iterations, the story had the life sucked out of it.
Another problem is the overabundance of story that Borderlands has. If Borderlands was intended to be the first in a film franchise, there wasn’t much reason to stuff in as much of the various video games as possible. There would have been time to get to those parts. However, director Eli Roth told Dexerto, “It was hard to streamline it, you know, I’m trying to throw in absolutely everything I can into the movie.” It seems as though this only served to hurt the movie, as audiences are most concerned with accuracy when it comes to adaptations.
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In the end, this is a tough situation for Borderlands fans. The franchise had the potential to be something great, but after so many delays and development changes, the movie ended up taking a turn for the worse. Perhaps if the project had fallen into different hands, it would have been better. Maybe there is a chance that this could happen someday in the form of a reboot television series. However, for now, Borderlands has given everything it has and must suffer the consequences.
One thing that really pissed me off about the movie is that at one point they’re walking across an iron crosswalk over a caustic pit of stuff that dissolves everything and the 72 lb soaking wet tiny Tina jumps on it in a piece of it breaks off almost immediately.
Okay, fair, so what do the rest of the characters do? The 300 lb 7 ft tall psycho guy and everyone else?
They all stand right next to each other and put all of their weight on it at the exact same time.
This is the kind of shit that just isn’t believable. That these battle-hardened space pirate action heroes would do something so stupid is just a perfect representation of the entire fucking movie for me.